iMac won't reboot or shut down after 10.11.5

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Try shutting down the computer using the power switch and then restart. If you can get it to boot, try running this program in your normal account , then copy and paste the output in a reply. The program was created by Etresoft, a frequent contributor. Please use copy and paste as screen shots can be hard to read. On the screen with Options, please open Options and check the bottom 2 boxes before running. Click “Share Report” button in the toolbar, select “Copy Report” and then paste into a reply. This will show what is running on your computer. No personal information is shown.

Etrecheck – System Information

I had the same pain. I did just what Apple told you and it worked... I can understand all technical explanations for this to happen, but it seems kind of ridiculous that it happend to us (and to many probably). Maybe they will take care of it in a new version (somebody listening?). Anyway, thanks a lot!

Hi ..

A Safe Mode boot deletes system caches that may help after an OS X update or upgrade.

Top left corner of your screen click the Apple  > Shut Down.

After your Mac shuts down, wait 10 seconds, then press the power button.

Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold down the Shift key. You should press the Shift key as soon as possible after you hear the startup tone, but not before.

Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple logo and progress indicator.

Once you are in Safe Mode, go back to the Apple  menu. From the drop down menu click: Restart

About Safe Mode

That happens because something has crashed but cannot be killed, thus, hanging the shutdown process. You will need to determine what that is so you don't continue having the problem. Meanwhile, press and hold down the Power button until the computer shuts down.

Reboot into Safe Mode so you can take a look at the Console logs to see if you can find what hung the last shutdown.

Yyou tried all the right steps...

Shut down your Mac. Use the power button if you need to. Now start it with the Shift key held down. This will start it into Safe Mode, with all extensions turned off. Safe Mode is slow to start, so give it time, it's checking a bunch of staff. If it works OK in Safe Mode, restart normally. If it works now, you're done.

If the problem return, you have an extension conflict. Turn off all extensions via System Preferences. To isolate which extension is at fault, turn one extension at a time, restarting in between, until you find the bad Apple.

Keep us posted 🙂

Is happening to me too... when I try to restart or shut down, the finder gets stuck and can't do it but I can use other apps... and the dock is still there. Can you keep us posted?

Thanks

How did you disable the extensions and login/startup???

I'm pretty lost and don't know where to do those things 😟

I am having the exact same problem! On Shutdown or restart - all desktop items disappear, menu bar goes away, and then it just sits there. I can start up applications (when I do the menu bar comes back).

I can force a shutdown by going to terminal and entering: sudo shutdown -h now

Booting into safe mode did not fix it. I stopped all extensions and that did not fix it. I removed the Wacom tablet software (seems to cause problems at times) and that didn't fix it!

This is only happening on my late 2013 Mac Pro - my MacBook Pro seems fine - both upgraded to 10.11.5 yesterday.

Need help!

Same here,

I've gone through all possible solutions including reinstall, no fix, Apple suggest backup, ERASE THE DISK and reinstall, it's funny they'll make

maintenance on May 19 ....

I just got off the phone with Apple. While I had disabled or un-installed most everything I could think of, I apparently missed a couple items. The key was if I booted in Safe Mode the shutdown/restart worked fine...

They had me go into my System Preferences / Users&Groups and then to Login Items for my user. sure enough, there were several items in there. At least a couple of them were for products I had supposedly completely un-installed or disabled! We removed everything from Login Items, the he had me shut down using the power button. After rebooting, shutdown and restart now work fine. I have gone back and re-enabled or reinstalled (in stages with testing in between) all the apps I had removed or disabled earlier today and everything still works fine - looks to be fixed.

I will add that before calling Apple I had (in addition to removing or disabling apps) also performed an SMC reset, reset the NVRAM, booted into recovery mode and reinstalled OS X 10.11.5 over the network - none of that fixed it. However, while removing the login items was the final fix, one or more of those things may have contributed to the fix?

Yep - one of the items in the Login list was a Wacom pref item. I had thought I had completely removed all the Wacom stuff through their utility earlier in the day. I have had problems with the Wacom drivers in the past - especially after a system upgrade. But it seems it has usually been display related issues, not shutdown issues. But, I suspect that may have been the culprit. I have since reinstalled and all still working fine.

Interestingly their web site showed the current version to be the same version that I had installed previously. I installed it again and then their utility opened and said there was an upgrade available - so I installed it.